Mobile SERPS &&nbspUsability

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

So here is the deal: Traditional websites frequently rank in mobile search results – especially if you are searching from a SmartPhone. What you may not realize is that the converse is also true – mobile pages can rank well in traditional search. This is quite an interesting phenomenon, and something that we need to address strategically.

All One Index Soon?

Why does this happen?

Well, Google has said that they really don’t want to index two versions of the web – one mobile and one traditional. Even though they do have different mobile-specific bots, they want those their bots all to feed into one index. Hmmmm….Is it just an interesting coincidence that they just launched the multi-format site mapping in Google, where you can combine all the different types of sitemaps that we previously had to submit separately? Possibly. At least it that could indicate a shift away from multiple indexes.

Did anyone notice that this shift happened pretty soon after Caffeine, as did the re-launch of Google Images, and some significant changes in Google Places?

Hmmmm…..It seems that Google might be moving away from having multiple indexes that must be queried for different types of content - like mobile, local, images, news, etc. to a 'one index' solution that has different types of ‘indexing attributes’ instead. That would actually do lots of things that Caffeine has done, like speed up searches (only need to query one index), and allow them to algorithmically prioritize things by freshness more effectively….

Different Indexes for Smart Phones and Feature Phones

But I have gone astray – We were talking about 'mobile'. We can’t know for sure if there are different mobile indexes. There definitely was a separate mobile index in the beginning of Google's ‘mobile’ search– you could always tell because the results were SO bad! Even in the past two years, I have seen mobile search results that were way off base – For example, the top result for a search on ‘subway sandwiches’ was a Gawker article for a long time; then Subway.com, and then m.subway.com. I just checked, and they have somewhat sorted that one out on smart phone searches, but it you still get weird results for feature phone search (shown below)! About 18 months ago Google changed the location of their mobile engine from m.Google.com to Google.com/m, and it did seem that the ‘/m’ feature phone search results were a bit better than they had been, but who knows!

As I have mentioned, there are different mobile search engine crawlers that are evaluating your website as if it was being rendered on a mobile phone. These mobile bots actually have both generic and specific user agent strings that will spoof actual phone handset models in order to understand how the website would render and function on the different phones. While they don’t do a great job, Google actually does try to only provide you with mobile search results that will actually work well on your particular handset – What that means is that there are slight variations on search results from phone to phone.

There are some simple ways to check what I am now describing as ‘mobile indexing attributes.’ I always start mobile rankings research by doing a normal search from my traditional computer. We know more about the traditional algorithm, so that sets my baseline for comparison. From there, I will do the same search from Google.com/m to see the differences. In most cases, the websites that are included in the traditional search results will be included in the SmartPhone search results – but sometimes in a slightly different order.

You don’t have to have tons of different phones to get a sense for what is going on in mobile search. There are a couple quick tips and tricks to help you do this all from the web. The first thing to know, is that you can do searches from your computer directly from Google.com/m. The results you get will be generic ‘SmartPhone’ search results. From that page, you can move on to see the results for the same query on feature phones by simply scrolling to the bottom of the page and changing the drop-down that says ‘web’ to say ‘mobile,’ and hit ‘search.’ The next set of results will be the generic FeaturePhone results. Search operators like 'site:' and 'link:' work in these versions of Google, and will return different results than they would in traditional search - a good indication to me that they are still using separate indexes.

Mobile-Friendly Signals for the Search Engines

The best way to indicate to the search engines that your page is mobile-ready, (beyond including the ‘no-transform’ tag, which will be discussed more in another post called What is Mobile Search Engine Transcoding? which should be live next week), is to provide the search engines pages that will work well on mobile phones. Handheld stylesheets can be included on any page on your site. If you don’t have mobile-specific pages, you can use these stylesheets to tell mobile browsers how you would like your existing pages to look when they are displayed on a mobile phone. These are especially good if you would like to change the order that your content appear in when it is displayed on a mobile phone. They should also be used to prevent the need for left-to right scrolling when your site is displayed on a mobile phone.

If you have mobile specific pages, you should set up user-agent detection on your site to ensure that, regardless of which pages rank (mobile or traditional) that users are presented with the appropriate version of the page, based on the device that they are using to access the page. If they are on a mobile phone, they should automatically be sent to the mobile version of a page – even if it is the traditional page that actually ranked in search engines. Conversely, if they are on a traditional computer, and happen to click on a mobile version of a page, they should be automatically be sent to the version of the page that is meant for traditional-computer viewing.

Last, include a page-to-page link in the upper left hand corner of each page that allows people to move between the mobile and traditional versions of the pages, if they can’t find what they are looking for, or need to over-ride the user-agent detection and redirection. The upper left-hand corner is the ideal location for this link, because it is always the first thing that people will be able to see, even if there is a mobile rendering problem with the site. If something is wrong with the way the page looks on someone’s phone, you don’t want to make them search all over for the button to fix it!

You should still crate the handheld stylesheet for your mobile-specific pages and traditional pages as well, just in case something goes wrong. They are a good signal to the search engines that the pages should be ranked in mobile search results.

Mobile Usability Options:

Mobile/Traditional Hybrid Pages Only: One set of pages that has two or more style sheets – One for traditional web rendering, usually called ‘screen,’ and one (or more) for mobile web rendering, usually called ‘handheld.’ An important note is that the iPhone will automatically pull the ‘screen’ stylesheet, unless you give other instructions. Since looking at a traditional website on an iPhone is really not a great user experience, I recommend creating a specific stylesheet that can be pulled by the iPhone. You can get very granular with this, and create separate style sheets for all different kinds of phones. You would then simply have them called in based on the screen size of the device that they target._

Traditional Pages for Computer and Mobile Pages for all Phones: Two sets of pages – one to be shown on traditional computers and one to be shown on mobile phones. The file structure of the mobile pages should be an exact replica of the traditional pages, with the addition of the ‘.m' or '/m'. User-agent detection and redirection should deliver feature phone users and smart phone users to the mobile pages automatically if they click on a link to a traditional page.

Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. Both sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering - This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone. _

Mobile/Traditional Hybrid Pages for Traditional and SmartPhone, Mobile Specific Pages for Feature Phones: Two sets of pages; one set of pages that are the mobile/traditional hybrid pages that use separate external stylesheets to be rendered on traditional computer screens and smart phones. The second set of pages are mobile specific pages, hosted on an ‘m.’ or a ‘/m’. The file structure should be an exact replica of the traditional file structure, with the addition of the ‘m’ or ‘/m’. User-agent detection and redirection delivers feature phone users here automatically if they click on a link to a traditional page while they are on a feature phone.

Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. Both sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering - This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone._

Traditional Pages for Computers, Graphical Mobile Pages for Smart Phones, Text Mobile Pages for Feature Phones: Three sets of pages. Traditional pages for traditional computers, touch-optimized pages for smart phones with touch screens, and mobile-optimized pages for feature phones and smart phones without touch screens. User-agent detection and redirection delivers users with touch screens to the touch-screen pages if they click on a link while they are on a touch-screen phone. User-agent detection and redirection delivers users on feature phones and smart phones that don’t have a touch-screen to the mobile-optimized pages if they click on a link while they are on one of those types of phones. In this scenario, you will need two mobile-specific subdomains or subdirectories. I recommend using ‘touch.’ or /’touch’ for the touch-screen pages, and ‘m.’ or /m’ for the mobile-optimized pages.

Always include links between the mobile site and the traditional site in the upper left hand corner of the page. All sets of pages should have a handheld stylesheet to control mobile rendering - This is in case the user-agent detection and redirection fails, or if the user clicks the link to see the traditional site from their mobile phone. User-agent detection and redirection should also be in-place to automatically deliver people on traditional computers who click on either version of the mobile pages to the traditional version of the page instead. It can also be used to send FeaturePhone or SmartPhone users to the version of the site that is best suited for their phone.

Thanks Cindy for your posts, that is literally opening a brand new word for SEOs (at least for me is quite new).

I've a question for you:

as far as the trend is that smartphones are going to lead the mobile market, what kind of relation do you see between Websites for mobile (or simply Websites) and their maybe corresponding Apps? For example: Mashable... I believe mostly reach it using its App.

Could Apps substitute the "traditional" website experience for sites as Mashable, NYT, Mailchimp... and the used only by simplier and "less interactive" business model (for instance, the website of a Bed and Breakfast).

This is a great question and one I get a lot. I think that as networks improve and coding standards become more uniform we may not need apps as much as we do now, because everything will move up to the cloud. We went through something similar with the traditional internet, when everyone was selling or giving away simple software downloads that cluttered up your desktop - Downloads were necessary because computers and internet were both slower and less powerful. This is less common now though, because traditional networks are faster, so everything can be run directly from the web, without a download.

For now though, apps are a really important part of mobile marketing. In some cases, the people who design a 'app experience' are the same as those who design the 'web experience' or even the 'mobile web experience,' but in my opinion, you tend to get a better app when you work with someone who specializes in app design. Not all designers are the same, and app design requires a different set of skills and a deeper understanding of the phone.

More and more, what I am seeing is that app design is influencing mobile web design, making mobile websites (and even traditional websites) more interactive and user friendly.

"If you have mobile specific pages, you should set up user detection on your site to ensure that, regardless of which pages rank (mobile or traditional) that users are presented with the appropriate version of the page, based on the device that they are using to access the page. "

It looks like cloaking to me: desktop version for the google bot and mobile version for the users. How you will handle this?

This post says that you should redirect users AND googlebot-mobile to the mobile version of a page if they open the desktop version. They don't say how to do that... Would you advice for 301 or 302 redirect? With 301 redirect, the original (desktop) version of the page is discarded from googlebot-mobile, and the mobile version is discarded from googlebot. But if there is only 1 index, couldn't this be a problem? (each robot discard and try to index different versions)

what i learned from the google webmaster blog post is "how to avoid cloaking" in this case. What i learned from the searchengineland article (posted few comments below) is not to block mobile contents from desktop bots and desktop contents from mobile bots. So i certainly don't recommend any redirection to desktop to mobile version or vice versa. A mobile user will not be able to access the full functionality of a website (if not provided in the mobile version) if you redirect him to the mobile version all the time. Instead give him an option (via link) to switch between mobile and desktop version.

- redirecting both users and bots (which is what the google blog tells us to do) is a sort of blocking, since googlebot-mobile won't be able to see the desktop content, and googlebot won't be able to see the mobile content

- redirecting users and not bots, is cloaking, even if there is a good reason to do that... So my question was, how is the best way to redirect users and bots, 301 or 302 ?

If you don't redirect at all, you WILL lose users if they land on the wrong version. Most of them won't see the link that goes to the right version, or won't bother to click on it... Of course, you should always give a link if the user really wants to see the other version after being redirected.

There is definitely a strategy for using rel=canonical here. I plan on writing another post about that soon. In general, if you are confident in your user-agent detection and re-direction then I think pointing the canonicals back to the corresponding traditional pages is fine. That way, your traditional url will rank, but when people on a mobile phone click it they will be taken to the mobile page instead.

You can also use rel=alternate, discussed here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35312. It is unclear if this will pass value or not, and I have yet to test it. What it does is put a conditional redirect in - If Google decides that the page should be transcoded (discussed more next week) then it looks for the rel=alternate. If there is a

<link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="alternate_page.htm" />

then Google will take the user to the alternate page instead of their own transcoded page. (This will make more sense when you read the post next week about transcoding! Stay tuned!) Here is the link for more info on rel=alternate from Google Webmaster Central: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35312.

I would generally avoid using rel="canonical" in this instance as it would negate the mobile version's ability to rank on its own within Mobile Search...for the time being.

I would second the cavaet you mentioned once its a siloed Index by then concentrating the page's power into the desktop version if the UA detection for mobile rendering is solid.

It will be interesting if Google starts pushing publicly at conferences the rel="alternate" like it did canonical the past year as its another backstop for sites, in this case for limited mobile rendering capabilities.

A client mobile site of ours is ranking really well for all the hardest keywords in the mobile ("FeaturePhone") index, but not as well in the generic ("SmartPhone") index.

Would you say that mobile SEO best practices are pretty much the same as Desktop SEO best practices, in terms of rankings? e.g., would it be beneficial to find other mobile websites that are authorities in your niche to link to your mobile site, on-page SEO, metadata, etc?

And I don't really fully understand the difference b/t the index delivering the results at m.google.com vs. the index delivering the results at m.google.com + mobile-tab-selected. Can you elucidate?

In general, all the traditional SEO best practices still apply. Links and on-page content are king. There is just a bit more to mobile SEO, but you need to get those things correct before worrying too much about the finer points of mobile SEO.

I am still studying the differences in the FeaturePhone index and the SmartPhone results. It appears that the FeaturePhone rankings are weighted more heavly on load time and clean code, but this is something I am still looking at.

You can use the links below to run some test queries. What do you think?

Thanks Suzzicks. I really have no idea. I am looking at a site www[dot]domain[dot]com that is a desktop XHTML site. It has a mobi detect script that redirects the user to a mobile version on a completely different domin (say, www[dot]mobidomain[dot]com . The mobidomain is DHTML and mobile compliant.

In the Feature Rich results, google only displays the www[]domain[]com as the URL underneath the search result - along with the little mobile phone icon alerting you it's mobile-compliant. Of course, when you click that result, the mobile detect script gets activated, knows your on a mobile phone, and voila, redirects you to the mobile version. The same is true in the SmartPhone rich index, except the domain shows up lower in the SERPS.

Not sure why

1. the Feature Rich mobile index displays the desktop URL, instead of the mobile URL that the desktop URL redirects to for a given search query

2. Why the SmartPhone mobi index displays the same desktop URL, but two pages down for the same sear query

3. What, if anything, this does to help you answer your question about the differences in the two indices.

oh nevermind, I just answered my own question at least for #1. My guess is: Google mobile shows the orig. desktop URL underneath, despite the fact the the domain redirects to the mobidomain, because the redirect script is javascript, i.e., not server side and not permanent or 302?

Interesting dilemma with certain older phones that won`t carry the correct stylesheets for particular websites. Although from a very basic view of the situation, you could say that the main issue is really that the search engine results would be incorrect just because they are requested on a mobile device and that in reality, no SEO business or consultant would completely rely on mobile device searches for their optimisations. I can see the point of view that it is a potential problem at the minute though.

I found this blog post to be pretty helpful for this subject. It describes how you can use CSS3 selectors to change what style sheet your site uses based on things like screen size. That way you can keep the same content on your site and only display it differently by using CSS.

I just checked on my iPhone if I have different results in Google SERP than on computer and results are the same (Australia). I wonder if smartphones will use Google regular SERP so worrying about SEO for mobile search does not bring great results.

Sometimes results are exactly the same, and it might be different fr Google.com.au. From what I can tell mobile browsing is still pretty expensive in Australia. You are right that there is probably low-hanging fruit for mobile SEO, but for you might get more exposure/volume/aquisitions from something like a comprehensive SMS campaign.

I'm a bit concerned regarding the duplicate content aspects. While they don't count this as duplicate content for in the broader sense, I'm reading this as meaning that they may show a mobile page as opposed to a non-mobile in the regular results - so if I want page A in the SERP and instead, they show the mobile version of page A, that's an issue.

Yes, that's addressed if you use detection and automatically send the user to the version you want. Yet I think it also means you can't just create a stripped down mobile version by removing SEO specific content in that version. Whether it's long-tail search content, or links used for boosting value /authority of other pages, these are things that have to be in both versions.

I know you address this by simply using style sheets and not stripping out content, however I just think it's important to emphasize that there are bigger picture reasons to do so.

I bring it up because I've got a non-profit site I maintain where the mobile version is a lot thinner on content than the non-mobile version.

Thanks for the comment. This IS a big concern because many mobile sites are much slimmer than their traditional counterparts.People assume that users on mobile phones want less content, and some studies show that this is accurate, so what are we to do?

Keeping all the stuff that is good for SEO could hurt the user experience, but that is not a new argument - We hear it for traditional SEO all the time. Obviously there needs to be a balance, but I think this is where things like the 'canonical' tag or 'alternate' tag are really critical for mobile SEO, but it is still not ideal because mobile pages could be ranked for content that is not even on the page.

When I see mobile pages that rank well in traditional search, it is usually because the code is cleaner, lighter and easier to crawl. When this happens, it might be that the traditional site needs to quit doing things that are hard on the bots.

Check out what Amazon has done here: http://yfrog.com/f/7eu57p/ (this screen shot was taken two weeks ago, but they appear to have fixed it.....hmmm......)

oh right - duh. If a mobile page is what they choose to put in the results instead of a non mobile version, that would be a great opportunity to compare things. because it could mean that the non-mobile page is too "heavy" and itself might benefit from trimming down.

I believe that the domain authority of the primary site can be passed to the mobile site as long as they are on the same TLD - either on an 'm.' or a '/m'. Degraded domain authority can be passed to other domains through rel=canonical or rel=alternate, but that is definitely not as good.

For me, a mobile version is more user experience to serve us the content in a format more appropriate more legible images with smaller and more compressed in order to have a quick download of pages. If all conditions to a mobile user experience are there, make an additional stylesheet (Handled or detection on the user agent) is enough.

See the reply above - Google doesn't count this as duplicate content. You can also click here: http://yfrog.com/7eu57p to see that there doesn't appear to be a penalty on this amazon search - the urls are exactly the same except for the 'm' and when you click on the links the page is rendered based on the device you are on. Even from the 'm.' if you are on a traditional computer it will give the the traditional page.

Haha - glad you liked it! Mobile SEO is doable, but it does require time and an understanding of the mobile landscape. Traditional SEO has lots of variables, but mobile SEO is that x100. It is made especially hard because Google doesn't have anyone really talking to us about it. I really want to open dialogue with them. They need a Matt Cutts of Mobile!

Most of smartphone runs on Webkit and support partially HTML 5, is there any advantage to make a mobile version using this future standard for ranking and adding semantic markup to the content ? Is google using those new markup tag ?

Definitely some good stuff to think about here. The importance of mobile content is undeniable. I need to put more effort into this area than I do. I like the idea of serving a different style sheet depending on the device that requests it. That makes the most sense to me from an SEO perspective. And it also better serves the user if you organize your content accordingly.

Great article. While rare, in my opinion occasionally you should think in terms of apps or mobile website. Obviously an app is more friendly than a mobile website for content subscribers/customers (would you rather go to pandora.com in your mobile browser, or download the Pandora app?) but it can also be a better investment depending on what you provide.

I'm definitely generalizing based on my social circle, but people seem to take a "gotta catch 'em all" attitude to apps, while I've never been recommended a website to visit on my phone. I am constantly told about this new app, or that new app, that I have to try/check out, and they aren't just games/applications in the traditional sense. Does your content make sense as an app? If you sell subscriptions on the web, does a freemium app model make sense?

You could always do both, but sometimes development time is precious. It's just something to consider :)

Doing both is always best (When you come to a fork in the road – take it!). Apps are OS specific, so if you only build an iPhone app, you are only reaching a really limited portion of the population. The experience is much easier to control in an app, but is it worth it to miss out on the rest of the mobile users who have a phone with a different OS? It depends on your demographics really. You have to see what % of your demographic has the handset that you want to build an app for?

We have seen recently that Android phones have surpassed iPhones in adoption. We knew this would happen because the Android OS is not tied to a phone or a carrier, meaning it is much easier to get a wide distribution. I have been warning people for a while about ignoring the Android market, and only focusing on building iPhone apps. Apple has a repeatable MO that has worked for them, and it is..... Intense levels of control and ownership at the cost of mass distribution and wider consumption. This is how they have done things with all of their products, and how they will likely continue to operate in the mobile world. If you want to reach the widest audience, Apple has never really been the best approach.

Hey - this is answered in my comments above. Essentially, Google does not appear to be counting mobile pages as duplicate content. Take a look at this to see what I mean: http://yfrog.com/f/7eu57p/. There does not appear to be a duplicate penalty in place there. Using the rel=canonical or rel=alternate is sometimes a good idea, but there are caveats.